I was having a bit of a chin wag with Roger when I asked him about sales figures towards the end of the magazine's life.

I expected it to be something around 5,000 or maybe 10,000 at a max but I was quite surprised with the answer:

Quote:

As to CF latter-day sales, I can [sic - can't] remember precisely but I think in the region of 17,000 to 22,000 copies per month. A figure that would be considered pretty damned good today, but in 1993/4 Europress considered pathetic.

Quite impressive considering the magazine at its peak was around 80,000 issues.

Maybe it was Commodore Format that had a sales figure of around 5,000 at the end?

Commodore Format's last few issues had a print run of 5,000 which is probably what you're thinking of Iain!

The reason we have that number of 5,000 is because Simon Forrester actually says so in the very last issue. The magazine wasn't in ABC by that stage so we don't have numbers on how many of those were sold. It was on firm sale though, so likely most of 'em.

Quite a fall there in the space of a year but the C64 market wasn't doing so well... I would assume the end of Zzap / C= Force would have added a few sales to C= Format afterwards, but as I remember from my management studies class in college there's not much to be gained from high market share in a shrinking market

That's about right Iain, yes. Again to put into context - in the year before, 1992, CF had a circulation of over 60,000. It shed 2/3 of the readers in just 2 years. Basically when the games dried up. So absolutely to do with the decline of the C64 itself.

And most devastating for Force and Format, really, was also the loss of big clients like US Gold and Ocean post '92.

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